THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
a wholesale violation of liberty has set back the entire process of
Communist evolution toward more humane behavior.
I believe, then, that we have no quarrel with Communism as
an economic system. I contend that if our government publicly pro–
claimed such an attitude-if we made it perfectly clear both to the
American people and to national leaders overseas that considerations
of economic ideology would no longer influence United States policy
-if we gave assurance to everyone that collectivism, wherever and
however pursued, was quite acceptable to us-the conduct of our
foreign relations would be enormously simplified. By discarding what
is
peripheral and dispensable in our quarrel with Communism, we
should be able to focus more precisely on what we find profoundly
objectionable in the Communist regimes. By narrowing the points
at issue, we should have clarified them: we should be in a position
to distinguish-as we cannot do now- the matters on which we are
ready to negotiate and compromise from those on which we must
insist at all costs.
As an economic system,
Communism
is
a perfectly respectable
way of doing things. There is no need to get upset or morally in–
dignant about it. We are called on to do no more than to apply to
it the criteria by which we judge our own economic performance–
efficiency and the advancement of welfare, public and private. These
goals may be in conflict (we are more and more realizing how fre–
quently in our own country they are), but at least we agree with
the Communists that they are the goals to be pursued. And we are
also coming to the realization that on the grounds of
public
welfare
our performance has been far from perfect. Similarly, the leaders
of the Soviet Union have become more frank about conceding that in
the sector of
private
consumption their record
is
highly unsatis–
factory. The elements of a dispassionate (and even friendly?) debate
on the virtues of the two competing economic systems are already
at hand.
This debate would not be a mere repetition of the century-old
contention between the merits of capitalism and those of socialism.
For neither of the protagonists
is
quite what it used to be.
As
the
capitalism of the West has become less capitalist, so collectivist doc–
trines and practices have grown less socialist. The traditional Social-
